So, when the personification of Death comes to claim him, he does not surrender readily and challenges him for a game of chess. He understands that even if God does not exist, death most certainly does. Antonius Block is well aware that he must die. Set in medieval Sweden, the film, in a very tactful way, shows the emergence of a modern man and his thirst for knowledge and, above all, ‘truth.’ Bergman conveys his modern sensibilities from depicting the image of an abandoned knight to the image of the chessboard this is a great leap from medieval faith to modern rational thinking.
In doubt, he questions, What if there is no God? And if not, then what gives our life meaning?. The questions seem to scream at your face “What is the meaning of life?” and “Why must our God remain silent in the face of destruction and chaos?” Block’s growing atheist sensibilities lead him from one question to another. The personified Death cloaked in stark black robe from head to toe provokes you, there is no subtlety here. His approach in grappling with themes of Life and Death is audacious, to say the least. This game is continued throughout the film.īergman throws a cold steel hammer at his viewers here. As he makes his way back to his estate, he is accompanied by none other than the culprit of this destruction itself, ‘Death.’ Block is well aware of his smeared fate and in some way accepts it too, but the agony over the meaning of his own life makes him strike a bargain with his pale collector and they start a game of chess, where if the knight loses, death may take him.
But Ingmar seems more than happy taking every theme head on and leaves generation after generation in absolute awe of his stark depiction of life and death.īergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” tells a tale of a disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max Von Sydow) returning from the failed crusade with his squire Jöns (Gunnar Bjornstrand) to his homeland Sweden, only to find it being gripped by plague and death. Existential work often travels on the back of allegorical modes, questions are asked in cloak of vagueness, and the answers (if there are any) are left to viewers to discuss over desserts.
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